George Kelling
Background: How the features of neighbourhoods and a zero tolerance policy can influence crime.
Key Study: Wilson and Kelling (1982) The police and neighbourhood safety: Broken windows.
Strategy: Crime prevention
Key Study: Wilson and Kelling (1982) The police and neighbourhood safety: Broken windows.
Strategy: Crime prevention
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Sentence starters for prep can be found here
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Background: Newman’s ‘defensible space’
Background: Zero Tolerance Policing
Background: Broken Windows Theory
Background: To prevent crime:
- Zone of territorial influence – Markers like fences and hedges should indicate that areas are private rather than public.
- Opportunities for surveillance – Housing should be designed so that people entering a communal area can be easily spotted and identified (e.g. designing housing around courtyards). Fewer residents to an estate means that it is easier to spot intruders.
- Image – Opportunities for personalising housing gives a sense of ownership and care rather than impersonal high rise flats. If individuals have a say in the planning of future housing they are also more likely to take care of it.
- Milieu – Buildings set around large open spaces attract more crime like vandalism compared to smaller, semi-private spaces like courtyards.
Background: Zero Tolerance Policing
- Police presence – increase this so people are aware that they will be watched.
- Expect arrests – give police a quota of arrests to make each day
- No crime is too small – any and all crime is stopped, so that the smaller crimes do not lead to the bigger crimes.
Background: Broken Windows Theory
- Disorder leads to
- Isolation, which leads to
- Petty crime, which leads to
- Serious Crime
Background: To prevent crime:
- Make people feel safe
- So they will go outside,
- Which makes it difficult to commit crime, as you are being watched
- So people will challenge criminal behaviour
Wilson and Kelling (1982) Broken Windows
Background
Broken Windows theory
Implications of Broken Windows theory
Background
- A variety of crime prevention strategies exist
- 1970s – 28 US cities, police officers were taken from ‘patrol cars’ to ‘walking beats’
- Foot patrol presence have no significant impact on crime rates. However, it helps ‘order maintenance’ and made communities feel safer.
Broken Windows theory
- To focus on serious crime as a method of crime prevention is misleading
- Serious crime is seen as a long-term consequence of disorder in communities
- Neighbourhoods with disorder/unrest/vandalism/rowdy children/abandoned properties can lead to fear in communities. This then leads to withdrawal from the community which can lead to further unrest and no maintenance of order
- Disorder when left unchallenged can lead to crime.
Implications of Broken Windows theory
- Assigning officers to foot patrol in neighbourhoods with high crime rates is not always beneficial as these are not always the most vulnerable to criminal invasion
- Officers should be assigned to communities where they can make the most difference
- Maintenance of order is the most important role of the police in crime prevention
- Zero tolerance.
Clarke’s social crime prevention strategies:
- Target hardening - Making criminal targets more difficult such as putting locks on bikes or immobilisers on cars.
- WHY – makes it less easy to receive positive reinforcement for the crime (operant conditioning)
- Access control - Making it difficult for criminals to get into places such as having phone entry systems in blocks of flats.
- WHY – limits availability and desirability.
- Stimulating conscience – Appealing to criminals’ consciences, e.g. copyright stealing of messages on videos.
- WHY – appeals to higher authority which requires obedience (Milgram)
- Denying benefits – Make crime less worth it, e.g. attaching ink-filled security tabs to items of clothing.
- WHY –makes it less easy to receive positive reinforcement for the crime (operant conditioning)
- Facilitating compliance – To encourage people not to commit crimes by making it easier to do the right thing, e.g. having litter bins regularly available so littering is reduced.
- WHY –makes it easy to do the right thing - positive reinforcement (operant conditioning)
